Books

Despite the internet leveling the playing field between consumers and salespeople, despite GM and Chrysler closing 3400 dealerships over the last few years, despite Cadillac offering to buy out 400 of their least profitable dealerships, despite Tesla selling an abundance of cars without even having a dealership, there is now a vanguard of forward thinking dealers who are creating new levels of success for their dealerships.

Of course, it took a major paradigm shift in the culture of their dealerships to handle the one underlying difficulty that has plagued dealerships for the last century.

Do you need a consultant to help your dealership join that vanguard?

A good consultant is a kind of car dealership whisperer. A consultant can help breathe new life into a dealership to make sure it is successful and remains successful, no matter what else comes down the pike.

James E. Russell’s guide, Test Driving Your Dealership, lays out objectively and exactly what a good consultant does so you can decide if you need one or not.

BEST: IF YOU WANT THE BEST, YOU NEED TO ALREADY BE THE BEST$24.95 – Hardcover

I’m sure if any time over the last hundred years you asked any business owners what their most effective form of advertising was, you’d get the same answer. Word of mouth.

If you asked them which advertising produced the most loyal customers, the answer would be the same. Word of mouth.

The most long term customers’ Word of mouth.

If you asked them how they created word of mouth advertising, though, they might mumble something about delivering a high quality product and service. But for the most part they’d have little idea how to actually create good word of mouth advertising.

For them word of mouth was more of a passive venture, something that “just happened.”

In the last twenty years or so, though, a more active strategy has been built up for referral marketing, which is, after all, merely the creation of good word of mouth advertising.

For the last hundred years every business person just “knew” that word of mouth advertising was the most effective. Today studies are showing that referral marketing may be even better than even that conventional business wisdom thought it was.